Marco Bravo

Marco Bravo is a Project Director at the IC² Institute of The University of Texas at Austin, leading the long-standing UT Austin|Portugal collaborative program. He is also the Executive Director of the Southwest NSF Innovation Corps (I-Corps) node. His expertise focuses on entrepreneurial wealth creation, international innovation, and global technology commercialization.

He is an engineer with diverse international experience and education, as well as significant leadership and managerial experience in multinational business, consulting, academia, government, and startups with extensive cross-cultural literacy in Europe and the US.

As an entrepreneur, Marco has co-founded three companies, with one successful exit, and a business angel fund, and actively mentored 120+ technology startups and entrepreneurs from multiple countries.

He has graduate studies from prestigious schools in Europe and the US, namely University of Minho, Mikkeli Polytechnic, Hannover University, Technical University of Lisbon, Carnegie Mellon University, and The University of Texas at Austin.

Before coming to The University of Texas Marco Bravo has been a scholar at the University of Minho and at the Engineering School of the University of Porto. In industry, he has worked at Continental AG in Germany and in Portugal, first as Production Superintendent and later as Production Department Manager where he was responsible for 350+ employees and €10+ million budget, leading change and reengineering processes. Afterwards, Marco Bravo has been Advisor and Chief of Staff of the State Secretary for Science, Technology and Higher Education of the Portuguese Government where he co-developed and implemented national policies on scientific development and technology commercialization expansion, leading to Portugal being the fastest growing European country in Science and Technology development. He was also the National Project Coordinator of the European-wide Eureka Program, having multiplied the number of R&D projects by a factor of three. He was co-responsible for developing the International Partnerships Program in S&T between Portugal and MIT, Carnegie Mellon University, The University of Texas at Austin, Fraunhofer Institute, and Harvard Medical School. He also led the creation of UTEN (University Technology Enterprise Network), a global initiative for the promotion of technology transfer and commercialization.

Being a frequent invited speaker at thematic events, Marco Bravo has published in peer-reviewed journals and been nominated Kozmetsky Scholar for academic excellence and the outstanding student of the MsC in Technology Commercialization at The University of Texas at Austin. Furthermore, he has been honored by the Portuguese Engineers Association with the “Best Thesis 2001” and the “Innovation Young Engineer 2000” awards. He has also been distinguished as the best Engineering student of University of Minho and bestowed with the merit prize of the Portuguese Universities as a student of excellence and honored with the “University – Industry” award by the Industrial Association of Minho. For three years in a row Marco Bravo was additionally recognized with the Scholar Prize of the University of Minho and was acknowledged with the Merit Prize of the Martins Sarmento Society.